Dec 7, 2009

It's been all over the intertoobs these last couple of weeks. My mate Gary sent me a link (thank you Mr G for keeping me festooned with valuable inspiration) Lego has teamed up with Muji to offer little kits that you can use to hole punch card and fit it neatly between lego bricks to build creatures and other interesting looking bits and bobs.

It's an absolutely great idea. I love the idea. It's got so many posibilities, but the actual kits they are offering are pretty limiting when you consider what you can accomplish on your own with some lego and a hole punch that you already have. Especially if you are in the habit of pilfering paint chips from Home Depot.

Really, this sort of thing is only going to appeal to small kids if they have maximum freedom of expression with it, rather than being limited to putting together small, pre-made kits (never mind that they are only available in Japan at the moment anyway).

The very afternoon that Gary sent me the link to these intriguing kits, me and my filth wizards sat down with our lego, paint chips and hole punch to see what we could create.They did some cutting shapes and I did the hole punching to get the holes in the right places (our hole punch happens to be a bit bigger than the circular knobs on the lego, so it was fairly forgiving as far as accuracy goes, and I could just eyeball it.

We built a whole load of structures with the punched card and lego. One ended up being a kind of multi storey car park thingy. Then I wondered if it would be easier to punch holes in larger sheets if I dabbed a stamp pad onto one of our lego base boards to get an imprint of where all the knobbles were to punch. This worked out pretty well, so I made a print out of a letter sized bit of paper showing punching guides that you can just cut out a shape and punch away.

Here's the template to print on some card if you want to try it out. Just click on the thumbnail to get the full resolution, and remember to not scale to fit page when printing, or you might get it printing out not at the right size to fit the lego.

We made some stairs using this... Then I began to wonder about using the lego to act as a base to stand up cardboard characters for imaginative play and the possibility of making a kind of diorama.

I sat and asked the kids what characters they wanted to colour and cut out and drew them as they coloured. We ended up with monsters, robots, animals, aliens, spacemen and princess fairies, which I hole punched for them and they stuck lego bricks on either side of to stand them up.Then the kids became interested in drawing their own characters and that's when the fun really began for me. I have a huge love of kid's drawings. This rather displeased robot that my five year old drew just makes me grin from ear to ear! My five year old wanted to make a backdrop, so she drew and coloured the hill with a rainbow and I hole punched and legoed it up so that it would stand on the table. Gradually the kids kept making more and more things to go with the back drop and they all connected together with the lego to make a really cute little diorama doodad.

Yep, that's my two girls in the front there, as drawn by the big one.

We haven't started yet, but the next plan is to make a Christmas diorama in the same way, with santa, reindeer, trees, sleigh, snowmen and all that good stuff. This would also be a great way for kids to make their own nativity scene! The possibilities for them to take the products of their imagination into reality with this technique is very exciting. Probably for kids that are much older than mine (that are only three and five)as well!

UPDATE:

Thank you for all the kind words people have left in the comments. I thought I should pop in at the bottom here that I've scanned some of the festive diorama cut outs that I drew for the kids. If you would like to print, colour and punch them yourself they are right here. Enjoy!

Thank you so much for sharing this! I hadn't heard about the Lego-Muji collaboration, but I love your adaptation. I'm visiting my parents and plan to bring back my old legos for my kiddos, so we will definitely be doing this at our house!

Cool! I hadn't heard this around the web, my oldest is really only just old enough to use Lego - but after he gets some at Christmas I'm going to try this, what a great new use for the basic Lego blocks.

I don't have a punch that fits the holes - tried that! we do have a muji/lego kit BUT the punches are all on back order so we are still waiting for that to arrive, I can wait to see what creations my little one comes up with. I love all the characters your girls made.

That worked fabulously and really gave the kids a lot of freedom. I'm wondering whether our hole punch is big enough for duplo, particularly as there is very little duplo on the market currently in Australia due to the GEC.

I absolutely ador this, my two boys (5, & 8) will go crazy with this idea. Thanks so much for sharing I love your blog, you are just one of the most creative people I have ever come accross. I pilfer paint chips as well, I love that your crafts are always so inexpensive and recycle what we have. Thanks a ton!

Still continuing with the brilliance. ANd again, it may not have been your original idea, but you take it to a whole new level. Keep it coming!!PS: bought my girls the laces at Ikea last weekend. They are going to love it.

What a brilliant idea! I haven't heard of the Muji version so you get full credit in my mind :) We're just contemplating moving to the Lego proper for our 4 year old daughter and I think that the ability to have flowers etc. would really appeal to her. We have a Duplo set with flowers and leaves but I love the idea of just using paint chips and your hole punch much much better. That's the brilliant thing about Lego, well it used to be anyways, that it doesn't constrain your imagination by proscribing what things need to look like!

You are absolutely brilliant! I saw these kits and thought they were perfect for my Lego obsessed son, but your idea is even MORE perfect for him! Thank goodness for creative and sharing people like you!

I saw a post about these Muji kits a few days ago and was lamenting that they could only be purchased in Japan. I was having creative block with how to do the hole punching part to make our own. Thanks for the great inspiration!

Someone just sent me a link to this through my blog! OH MY GOODNESS! this is amazing!!! I can't wait to show this to our boys, They are lego fanatics! LOVE, LOVE this idea. Truly ingenious. We love to do dioramas as well. What a great way to actually get things to stand up. Amazing!!!!!!!

I am so incredibly amazed by this post and the other two you linked. I have forwarded the ideas on to another friend who is a Lego fanatic, and can't wait to try this with my son. He is a new initiate to Legos, and I think this is going to get us all excited to play with them. Thank you for such great creativity!

I'm teaching a "Lego Art" class for my city youth art festival. The kids have to leave their blocks at class for two weeks and I wanted something simple they could take home the first day. This is perfect thanks for sharing!!!!!

THIS IDEA IS BEYOND AMAZING. WE HOMESCHOOL, AND THIS WILL BE GREAT FOR WHEN WE STUDY DIFFRENT PERIODS OF TIME, OR OTHER AREAS. WE CAN MAKE PEOPLE AND OTER THINGS FRO THE TIME WE ARE STUDYING AND THE KIDS WILL HAVE AN INTERACTIVE PLAYSET TO GO WITH IT.THE HISTORY COLORING BOOKS ARE GOING TO TAKE ON A WHOLEN NEW MEANING. ALSO, YOU CAN DO WHOLE STORIES FROM YOUR FAVORITE MOVIES. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SHARING THIS. LEENA

Oh, this is so cool! We did some today, but I just wanted to mention we took some full-length photos (including one in costume from dance class!) and did the whole punch in the bottom so that we could have REAL PEOPLE as playthings. They're stiff enough & the wallet-size photos are just the right size for playing. Thanks for the awesome ideas!

Hi, I love this and would love to use it with my Son in the future. I have a lot of trouble with hard drives and I now use Pinterest to save all the pages I want to find again. Would you be OK with me pinning your Lego Post?

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